2l6 
The Keys of Death. 
[March, 
thus a group of faCts of which it is hard to speak without 
denying the faCts we have just mentioned on the acquired 
toleration of poisons. We have, indeed, here to deal with 
very complicated effects. We know that the drunkard or 
the opiumist can swallow, without apparent result, doses of 
alcohol, of methyl- and amyl-compounds, or of laudanum, 
which would be rapidly fatal to a person “ unseasoned.” 
Still we know that this immunity is bought at the expense 
of his general health. 
These considerations lead us to the question of “ slow 
poisoning.” Popular tradition and imaginative literature 
often introduce us to a very interesting villain, who gives 
his victims a dose calculated with such marvellous precision 
as — whilst producing no immediate adtion — to bring on 
inevitable death after the lapse of a certain number of 
months. Much of this may be safely pronounced impossible. 
Nevertheless a few ugly instances have occurred lately 
which warn us that in this department, as in many others, 
modern Science has not yet thrown an eledtric light into all 
the dark hiding-places of Nature. We know some of the 
details of the case of a retired Indian officer, who died not 
long ago at a town in one of the Eastern counties, and who 
displayed symptoms utterly irreconcilable with any recog- 
nised disease, and scarcely intelligible on any other hypo- 
# thesis than that of an unknown poison administered previous 
to his return home. 
We have thus taken a hasty and necessarily superficia 
survey of a subjedt which presents to the chemist and the 
biologist numbers of unsolved problems — problems not 
merely of high scientific interest, but of the greatest prac- 
tical importance. This tempting harvest-field is now, 
however, closed to Englishmen. Our laws, which with 
inimitable logic once deemed that “in a liberal construction 
copper is tin,” now see “ vivisedtion ” where there is no 
“ sedtion ” at all. 
